The National Geographic Magazine
The Tapps, though descended from English
stock, spoke no English.
"I've fished for 45 years, since I was 10
years old," Phileas said.
"A hand line has
always been good enough for me-no nets.
I build my own boats and I built this house.
"I've only one son, but eight daughters.
The daughters bring me more sons, though,"
he added, smiling at son-in-law Willie, who
sat at Phileas's left.
"For 22 years I was the best fisherman on
the coast with my brother.
He drowned
when a tempest overturned our boat. I was
lucky to hold on to some bits of wreckage."
Phileas smiled again, saying, "Now for two
years I am the best fisherman on the coast
with my son."
Icy Water and Burning Sand
We went on to Gaspe, chief town of the
region. Near here in 1534 Jacques Cartier
set up a cross claiming the area for the King
of France.
Gaspe town is terminus of Quebec's eastern
most railroad, the Gaspe branch of the Cana
dian National Railways. That line serves
the south shore of the Peninsula.
The sun beat down hot as we skirted bays
and beaches of the tip of Gaspe. To cool off
we plunged into numbing water near Corner of
the Beach. Burning sands thawed us between
(lips as we listened to wavelets lapping the
beach with a sound like tearing silk.
A few miles farther, over steep, forested
hills, glorious Perce swept into view.
"There you are!" enthused Claude Melan
con, our genial travel companion.
"The Per
ron Boulevard is a golden belt circling the
Gasp6. Perce forms the shining buckle!"
The famous village curved between green
fields and blue sea. Just offshore, its sheer
cliffs rosy in the sun, rode the great Pierced
Rock (Rocher Perce) that names this place
(page 455). Waves have worn an archway
through the south end of the rock. Beyond
lay Bonaventure Island, site of a famous gan
net rookery (page 459).*
Perce Rock is a treasury of fossils. The
American geologist, John Mason Clarke, esti
mated that more than four hundred million
fossil trilobites and brachiopods, little marine
animals, are locked up in the monolith.
From La Normandie Hotel we explored
Perce. We climbed the red cliffs of Mont
Ste. Anne. At low tide we walked across
the bar to the Pierced Rock. We watched
gulls in thousands tidy up the beaches where
fishermen cleaned their cod.
Prominent French-speaking people summer
at Perce. We went on a picnic with Leon
Lortie, noted professor of chemistry at the
University of Montreal.
Dr. Lortie told of sharing an airliner seat
recently with a Sister of Ste. Anne. After
more than 20 years at a mission station in
the far north, the good woman was on her
way to visit her family in Lachine, near
Montreal.
"Though elderly, she was still full of pep,"
Lortie said.
"She told me about an old god
less prospector, abandoned by Lady Luck,
who stumbled into her hospital to die.
"The Sister asked him to pray. He knew
no prayers and felt they were useless anyway.
Undismayed, the Sister told her faithless
patient to repeat after her, 'Mon Dieu, je
t'aime beaucoup' ('My God, I love you very
much').
"The grizzled relic of the trails heard 'Mon
Dieu' as 'Mon vieux' ('my old friend'), and
snorted, 'Well, if you love me, why don't you
kiss me?' So she did!"
As we drove southwest from Perce along
the Gaspe coast, Claude pointed out a
promontory.
"That's Cap d'Espoir," he said.
"In Eng
lish it means 'Cape of Hope.'
Early British
navigators paid heed to the name's sound but
not its sense. They called it Cape Despair!"
At Grande Riviere we stopped at the Laval
University (Quebec City) fishery station, a
lobster hatchery and laboratory for study of
the cod fishery.
Cod Swallow Rocks for "Ballast"
"A big cod is so voracious he'll eat any
thing bright," Jean Louis Tremblay, the direc
tor, told us.
"That's why fishermen catch
him so easily even on a shiny piece of lead
with hook attached.
"We've taken a bunch of keys, a broken
spoon, a watch, and a bottle top from cod
stomachs. Cod love bits of wave-worn glass.
We caught one that had gulped down a piece
of a wine bottle. A scrap of label on it gave
the name of the Atlantic liner that threw it
overside.
"The greedy fish pick up glistening rocks
in quantity. Fishermen say that when the
cod sets out on a long journey, he takes on
ballast."
In the little town of St. Charles de Caplan
we called on Father Georges Hermel Rioux,
priest of the parish, who has organized a
highly successful agricultural cooperative.
Last year La Fraternit (Cooperative did
$275,000 worth of business. It sold turkeys,
* See "Sea Bird Cities Off Audubon's Labrador," by
Arthur A. Allen, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE,
June, 1948.
450